Communities devlopment

Getting started in the Facilitating Online Communities course (N. 21st Century Learning: The Art of Building Virtual Communities (
This is cross posted over on techLEARNING.

Come join in the conversation. Anyone who has ever thrown a party or held a meeting has had this unvoiced fear: what if after all the work of preparation, nobody shows up? Or worse, people show up, take a quick look around, decide it isn’t worth their time and leave! You'd think developing a virtual learning community (VLC) or online community of practice (CoP) would be easier.

In a new book, Cultivating Communities of Practice: A Guide to Managing Knowledge, the authors offer a practical guide to making knowledge work inside an organization.

In this excerpt, the authors detail seven design principles for cultivating communities, everything from "design for evolution" to "combine familiarly and excitement.
" by Etienne Wenger, Richard McDermott, and William M. Snyder Seven principles for cultivating communities of practice In Silicon Valley, a community of circuit designers meets for a lively debate about the merits of two different designs developed by one of the participants.

Huddling together over the circuit diagrams, they analyze possible faults, discuss issues of efficiency, propose alternatives, tease out each other's assumptions, and make the case for their view. Because communities of practice are voluntary, what makes them successful over time is their ability to generate enough excitement, relevance, and value to attract and engage members. 1. 2.
Ton Zijlstra.